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HIGHEST SERVICE 


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By Wiittam E. Doucuty 


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DEVOTIONAL 
SERIES 


INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT 
OF NORTH AMERICA 


111 FirtH AVENUE New York City 


Price, 5 cents each, 50 cents 
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HIGHEST SERVICE 


By 
WILLIAM E. Doucuty 


Being one of a series of devotional 
pamphlets designed to cultivate the 
spiritual resources of the church. 


INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT 
OF NORTH AMERICA 


111 FirrH AVENUE New York City 


ame 
fee, 





The Highest Service 


‘By WILiIAM E. DouGHTY 


Agee WORD service has taken on new mean- 
ings in this age of power. Skill and strength 
are in great demand. Many inspiring avenues 
of service to the community, the nation, and 
the world are open to Christian leadership. 
Among them all not one reaches so far, not 
one releases such influence, not one so changes 
the direction and spirit of all other lines of 
activity as does a prayer life of great reality. 


THE OPEN SECRET 


P raver is keeping company with Christ. 
Prayer dies without constant fellowship with 
him. . Prayer is no cheap thing. The power 
prayer brings cannot be had for the mere ask- 
ing. It expands with a more perfect under- 
standing of Christ, with yielding to his call. 
It deepens with burden bearing. It widens 
with lifting. It strengthens with the vision 
of the kingdom. Prayer is an eye horizoned 
only by the total program of Christ. Ignor- 
ance of prayer is an unspeakable misfortune. 
Prayerlessness is death. 


To master the secrets of prayer there must be 
absolute surrender and complete uncovering 
of the heart to Christ. Surrender is both an 


2 THe HIGHEST SERVICE 


act and an attitude. ‘The act is abandon to 
God, the attitude is obedience and abiding. 
The act is the first thing, the attitude is per- 
petual. The first is an exercise of will plus 
an attitude of love. 


There is nothing like prayer over the open 
Book to uncover the heart and bring one to 
abandonment. ‘The uplifted eye and the open 
Book create an atmosphere in which it Is easy 
to release one’s life for service. After that the 
need of fresh overflowings of passion and pur- 
pose, of deeper obedience and more unbroken 
peace is constant. Prayer satisfies this need. 


A Woritp MovEMENT 


Gop HAS often revealed his world purpose 
to men unpromising. John Stewart was an 
uncultured and drunken negro. To human 
eyes he was the last person in the world to be- 
gin a great movement for the advancement of 
the kingdom of God. He was converted after 
one of his debauches. He united with the 
church. He began at once to live the life of 
prayer. He had a habit of retiring to the fields 
or forest to pray. During one of these seasons 
he was deeply impressed with his duty to carry 
the gospel to the despised and neglected In- 
dians. He tried to evade the call. It grew 
each prayer season more imperative and more 
insistent. 


He yielded at last, and in spite of limitations, 
the protest of his friends, and great difficulties, 


PRAYER AND LEADERS OF MEN 3 


he did a notable work among the Wyandottes. 
With remarkable zeal he appealed to the 
chiefs. He urged them to believe it was the 
will of God that men go to all nations and 
preach to all people. An appeal for help was 
sent out. The Missionary Society of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church was organized, 
and now works over all the continents and 
many islands of the world. To inaugurate 
great movements and to change the currents of 
human history, God sometimes uses humble 
men. “We have this treasure in earthen ves- 
sels.’ But we have it. 


PRAYER Empowers MEN 


Teese are men of prayer. They are men of 
power. Prayer was a consuming passion in 
the life of George H. C. McGregor, who sent 
out seven missionaries from his own church 
and was planning to win another seven when 
he was cut down by death. It was he who 
said, “I would rather train one man to pray 
than ten men to preach.” Such pastors can- 
not fail to make their congregations grapple 
with the supreme spiritual realities. 


LEADERS Far AFIELD 


D Avip LIVINGSTONE penetrated into the 
secrets of the Dark Continent, and then died, 
as he had lived, upon his knees. 


When the body of Horace Tracy Pitkin was 
found after the fury of the Boxer attack, his 
hands were clasped in prayer. 


4 THE HIGHEST SERVICE 


Self-sacrificing devotion to Christ creates pio- 
neers like Verbeck of Japan, of whom the Jap- 
anese themselves said, ‘“IThis benefactor, 
teacher, and friend of Japan prayed for the 
welfare of the empire to the last.” 


When Judson finished his Burmese Bible, tak- 
ing the last sheet in his hand, on his knees in 
prayer he dedicated it to God. 


As James Gilmour, the martyr missionary 
crossed the frontier into Mongolia and caught 
sight of the first hut, he kneeled and gave 
thanks to God for a redeemed Mongolia. 


MEN oF MiIcHT AT HOME 


J ason LEE’s diary is saturated with prayer. 
Out in the Oregon country he wrote: “My 
Father in heaven, I give myself to thee. O 
may I ever be wholly thine, always guided by 
thine unerring counsel.” 


Sheldon Jackson, with an eye on the far hor- 
izen, had the spirit of the explorer. One of 
the most moving anecdotes in his biography is 
the story of an epoch-making prayer meeting 
on the Missouri River at Sioux City, where, 
with two other men, he looked out over the 
three great states centering there—Iowa, Ne- 
braska, and South Dakota—and claimed them 
for the empire of Christ. 


Who can read of the prayer life of such 
soldiers as Chinese Gordon, or Armstrong, or 


MEN oF MIGHT 5 


Stonewall Jackson, without hearing the call 
to intercession ? 


This spirit distinguishes philanthropists like 
George Mueller, who secured through prayer 
seven million dollars for the care of his or- 
phans. His was an exceptional case only be- 
cause it was marked by an exceptional amount 
and reality of prayer. 


Henry Clay Trumbull talked to God as a 
friend in the flesh about every problem in the 
upbuilding of the Sunday School Times. 


There have been reformers, too, like Wilber- 
force praying and fighting, until at three 
o'clock in the morning Parliament passed a 
bill amending the charter of the East India 
Company so as to admit missionaries into In- 
dia. Then he said, “I am persuaded that we 
have laid the foundation stone of the grandest 
edifice that ever was raised in Asia.” 


All Sunday School workers should know, of 
course, of Harriet Lathrop, whose story is told 
in “Old Time Student Volunteers.”’ Her de- 
votion to Jesus Christ led her to organize a 
Sunday school in the face of great opposition. 
She so lived and taught in the power of the 
Spirit that she not only went out herself as a 
missionary, but three sisters followed her; one 
brother became a home missionary; another 
went into the ministry; and her daughter be- 
came the wife of a home missionary. 


6 THE HIGHEST SERVICE 





Tue Fire THat Never Goes Out 


N aruanten Cogss of Boston, a_ business 
man, had a prayer room in his store. 


Henry Martin wrote, “I lay in tears inter- 
ceding for the unfortunate natives of this 
country.” 


Neesima advanced on his knees. 


Pandita Ramabai with 1600 women and girls 
depending on her replied to one who inquired 
what she should ask from the people of Amer- 
ica, ‘“Prayer! Give me prayer and I’ll have 


all.” 


When in his last illness the head of an eastern 
college was told that he was about to die, he 
replied, “Is that so? Then lift me from the 
bed and place me on my knees and let my last 
act be a prayer to God for the salvation of 
the world.” 


Hidden workers, too, there are who are mighty 
‘helpers together by prayer.” Dr. G. Camp- 
bell Morgan dedicates his book on ‘“The Prac- 
tise of Prayer” to one of these: ‘““To Marianna 
Adlard, one of the hidden workers who endure 
as seeing Him who is invisible and who in 
secret labor by intercession with those who 
preach the Word.” 


THE GREATEST OF THEM ALL 
W HEN we have been inspired by these and 


a multitude more “whom no man can num- 


THE VoIcE oF Gop Z 


ber,’ we come at last to look at Christ and 
let these words of his once more search us 
through and through: ‘And in the morning, 
a great while before day, he rose up and went 
out and departed into a desert place, and there 
prayed.” “And it came to pass in those days 
that he went out into a mountain to pray and 
he continued all night in prayer to God.” 


We dare not forget also that He promised his 
followers that through prayer “Greater things 
than these shall ye do.”’ His call is to the 
highest, most glorious service that can be 
offered man. 


THE Voice oF Gop 


W E DO well, however, to remind ourselves 
of what Andrew Murray said: ‘To break 
through old habits, to resist the clamor of 
pressing duties that have always had their way, 
to make every other call subordinate to this 
one, whether others approve or not, will not be 
easy.” 


Our age needs this. Its life must be saturated 
with the spirit of intercession. ‘There must 
be a rediscovery of prayer power. There must 
be a new dedication to the practise of prayer 
until our whole high, intense life is subdued, 
quieted, fused, with the holy fire of a new 
devotion to Christ. This is God’s supreme 
call to us. Will we heed the call? Now? 


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